Final Rights (5 page)

EIGHT

2004

A
few hours after Tate’s early morning call to Holly, the two of them sat at a
small table inside Heiwa Shokudo, a trendy Japanese restaurant on North
Lexington Avenue.

Tate never let much time
pass between thoughts, really no time at all; that’s just the way her mind
worked, leaping from point to point, and all of it making sense to her. But she
had trained herself with great effort to slow down while talking to others,
even if she could not help but think way ahead of the actual conversation. So
she stopped after telling Holly about the doors on her house and the one on
Chestnut and waited for a response.

“What do you mean, it’s the same door as the
one on your house?” Holly asked.

She thinks I’m
crazy,
Tate
thought.
She
thinks I’m just going off on another tangent, pursuing yet another crazy idea
I’ve gotten into my head. But that’s not the case. There really is something
here, something unusual about those doors. I know it. It’s so obvious. It
should be obvious to her, too.

But she said: “You know
that fancy door on the house I’m renovating—the size of it, the scroll around
the panels, the hardware on it?” She could barely contain her excitement.
“Well, this old house on Chestnut Street has a door very much like it. It has
the two panels, the scrolls, different hardware, but they are very close to the
same in a lot of ways.”

Tate finished and sat
back, careful not to say everything she thought about what this find might
mean.

“Oh,” said Holly, “now
I get it. You think there’s a connection. That’s interesting.”

“You think I’m crazy,
right?” Tate asked, bracing for the answer.

“You’re kidding,
right?” Holly asked, puzzled. She saw the veil drop just behind Tate’s eyes. “I
mean about being crazy, not about the door.”

“No, I’m not kidding .
. .” Tate saw the perplexed look on Holly’s face. “. . . about either,” she
added.

They looked at each
other and burst out laughing at the same moment, Tate with her full, body-slam
laugh that turned the heads of the other customers in the restaurant, Holly
with her fluttering, closed-mouth twitter that radiated love and enveloped Tate
in cottony comfort. They laughed until tears ran down their cheeks.

“You are a bit of a nut
case, Tate, but you certainly
are
not crazy. Tell me more about the doors.”

As they ate lunch, Tate told Holly
everything she thought about the meaning of the doors on the two vastly
different houses and Holly shared what she had discovered about the history of
the house on Chestnut.

The place had only two owners on file in the
tax records. The first, a man named Harland Freeman, apparently had it built in
1940. The current owner, a living trust created in January 1942 for the benefit
of Leland Samuel Howard, had taken possession less than two years later.

On her way home, Tate pondered several
questions.
What happened to
Harland? Why had he owned the house for only two years? Why did it sit vacant
and deteriorating? Who, if anyone, was looking after the place? Who is Leland
Howard?
These questions ran
helter-skelter through Tate’s mind, totally preoccupying her and culminating in
a massive headache.

Tate enjoyed few things more than an
afternoon nap, and a headache like this one provided a perfect excuse. The warm
weather allowed her to open the windows in the bedroom, flooding it with
sunlight and a fresh breeze. She dropped onto her bed, quickly sinking into a
state of deep physical relaxation. But her mind kept working, as it often did
during sleep, and she awoke an hour later with Pocket snoozing in the crook of
her arm and a plan of action.

Her work in the following days left Tate
feeling hectic and exhilarated. She managed to keep tabs on Dave who made
slow-but-steady progress on the renovation project next door, but she spent
most of her time at the public library on Haywood Street and in the archives of
the
Asheville
Citizen-Times,
searching
for information about Harland Freeman and Leland Howard.

She found minimal, but shocking tidbits.
Harland Freeman had committed suicide at his home at 305 Chestnut Street on
February 13, 1942. She uncovered only three references for Leland Howard. Two
of them mentioned him in passing as a craftsman of note engaged by wealthy
Ashevilleans when building their stately mansions. In the third, he appeared as
the husband of the deceased, one Marie Eleanor Howard, the victim of a vicious
beating in her own home in 1965.

These revelations stunned Tate. The odds
that one house had connections to two sensational deaths seemed unbelievable.
Far from answering her questions, what she learned only generated new ones, and
she became even more determined to uncover the full story of the deteriorating
beauty that had ignited her curiosity.

NINE

1927

Ellie’s
pregnancy put an end to all her girlhood fantasies. She could not finish school
and move to New York to find fame and fortune the way she had dreamed for
years. Instead, she would get married, have a child, make a life here in
Asheville. Several aspects of her new plan plagued her, but finding a husband
took top priority.

This problem occupied
her totally in the face of her looming pregnancy. She walked through her life,
attending classes and dispensing Coca-Cola at the soda fountain at Woolworth’s
where she worked part-time after school, but all of it she did in a fog.

One afternoon, as she
walked to her locker, head down, deep in thought, she ran right into Leland
Howard. Shocked, they both tumbled to the floor in a heap.

“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” blurted Ellie as
she scrambled to her feet.

“Uh . . . uh . . . oh . . . excuse me.”
Leland could barely speak. “My fault . . .”

“No. No. Totally my fault. I’m so sorry.”
Ellie’s mind raced. She knew Leland, but they traveled in different social
circles. A senior like Harland, Leland’s demeanor tended toward quiet, even
shy. Studious and always in the background, Ellie and the rest of the girls
rarely noticed him. Now Ellie looked at him closely as they both got back to
their feet.

Leland had a country-boy way about him,
which Ellie found oddly attractive. She studied him carefully.
Only a few inches taller than me, but
that will have to do.
A
full head of light brown hair hung straight and shiny around his kind face. His
worn clothes fit him well, and Ellie noticed his strong arms and weathered
hands. Leland Howard did not constitute good boyfriend material, but he
definitely made good husband material.

“You’re Leland Howard,
right?” Ellie put on her come-hither smile and tilted her chin down a bit so
that she looked up at Leland through her long eyelashes.

“Uh, yes . . .” The fact that Ellie knew his
name came as a surprise to Leland.

“Well, Leland Howard, I think I owe you an
apology. How about you walk with me to Woolworth’s after school and I’ll treat
you to a Coca-Cola?”

“You don’t have to . . .” Leland broke into
a fine sweat.

“Oh, but I want to! Please say you will.”

“Uh, okay, but . . .”
Leland’s face flushed, and his breathing became shallow. He seemed to focus
intently. “But, are you sure you want to . . . ?”

“Why, of course I’m sure, Leland. I’ll see
you then.”

Leland
stared after Ellie as she sashayed away, his heart pounding rapidly. The girl
he had had a silent crush on for two years had literally knocked him off his
feet and asked him out. He refused to let disbelief quell his excitement.

Ellie
courted Leland with enthusiasm and determination. In a matter of days she
seduced him into making love to her, not that it took a lot of urging. For
Leland, however, intimacy at that level constituted a sacred act, and it
confirmed what he had known since he had laid eyes on Ellie the very first
time. He loved her. He loved her with his heart, his soul, every single part of
his being. The unexpected news of her pregnancy filled him with happiness. How
could she know so quickly? That question puzzled him, but his awareness of his
overwhelming good fortune at having found his soul mate banished his doubt to
the deepest corners of his mind.

Marie Eleanor Vance and
Leland Samuel Howard married in a small ceremony in Ellie’s backyard on the
Saturday after Leland graduated. Seven months and three days later, she gave
birth to their first and only child.

TEN

1939

This
will do very nicely,
thought Harland Freeman as he surveyed the plot of land in front of him.

His house—no, his masterpiece—would perch at
the top of the rise. The hill would need to be cut back a bit and supported
with a retaining wall of fieldstone. Little jewels would adorn the ledge at the
top of the wall. Not jewels actually, but the drops of cobalt and sea green and
silvery gray glass he imagined would be a nice addition to the natural colors
of the stone.

The steps up from the street would have to
be shallow, not as deep as those of the other houses in the neighborhood. He
detested having to walk up steep steps. It just seemed wrong to him that one
should have to suffer through physical strain before entering the elegant
edifice he planned to build. He wanted all of his visitors, and he expected
there would be many, to enter gracefully, a befitting introduction to the soir
é
es
he would host.

Harland Freeman did not enjoy popularity in
town, but he was an important man. A pompous man who put great stock in
appearing to be in control of all aspects of his life, he kept secret his
disappointment about how things had turned out for him.

Well, this house would finally seal his
position among Asheville’s business elite. They would no longer be able to
snigger behind his back, wondering when he would make some fatal error that
would land him in bankruptcy, put him out of business and make it possible for
them to get away with publicly deriding him. Maybe they didn’t like him, but
they would have to respect him once he built his house. They would attend his
parties and thank him graciously for having been invited, and they would hide
any contempt they had for him behind their smiles and friendly chatter. He
would see to that. The shame he harbored for the place he had grown up, only
blocks away, would finally be dispelled by the house he planned to build here.

Childhood memories always made Harland feel
sick. Now, even while envisioning his new home sitting atop the sloped hill,
his stomach churned as images pushed to the surface of an old shanty on a
junk-filled patch of land at the edge of Stumptown. And he remembered Mazie.
Mazie, who had saved his life in more ways than one. Mazie, whom he loved and
hated in equal amounts. Mazie who these days crossed the street rather than speak
to him.

Mazie
gathered her apron in her hands and stepped into the morning sun splashing
across her small stoop. She breathed in the fresh, wet air. Dew glistened on
the small plants pushing their way through the damp earth in her small garden,
and her chickens clucked and pranced in their hutch beside the house.

“Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful
morning.” She started and ended every day in the same way—giving thanks for
what she had and asking the Lord to watch over her and hers. “I don’t ask for much,
Lord, just enough to feed my family, a warm place for us to sleep, my loved
ones to come home safe and the chance to do your work here on Earth.”

Depending on how one defined God’s work,
Mazie had plenty of it to do. She kept her own house, tended to the needs of
her family and also worked in the homes of the rich folks in Montford who
sought her out, in particular for her cooking. Her exceptional skill with
everything from roast beef to apple raspberry pie gave Mazie more freedom than
most of the women in Stumptown who worked from dawn to dusk cleaning, washing,
ironing, scrubbing floors and doing any other task assigned to them by their
employers.

Two families employed
Mazie, both of them within a mile of her small place in Stumptown. Every day
but Sunday she went to the Milners’ in the late morning where she prepared
lunch and put dinner on, to be finished and served by the kitchen maid. She
then walked three blocks to the Raskins’ to prepare their dinner, the leftovers
of which would be used for the next day’s lunch. When she got home she fed her
own family and tended to her daily chores. She filled her mornings before work
with feeding the chickens, cooking for her own family and getting her husband
off to the mill and her children to school.

Mazie liked her routine. She enjoyed her
work and her employers generally treated her well. What she didn’t like was
surprises. And as she stood on the stoop that morning in the warm sunshine, she
spied a surprise coming up the street toward her.

“Well I’ll be . . .” She shaded her eyes and
squinted to get a better look. “Who’s that scrawny little white boy toddlin’ up
my street?” She walked down the steps as he approached.

Harland had learned to
walk only a few months earlier, and he had taken to it quickly. Whenever he got
out of the house, he headed off in one direction or another, often wandering
around for hours, looking for scraps of food and whatever else he could
scavenge until his path crossed his mother’s—who did her own roaming—or someone
else brought him back home. Today he had meandered into Stumptown and found
Mazie. He took one look at her, then walked right up and threw his little arms
around her thick calf, hugging her tight and smiling into her dark face.

“Who are you, little boy?” She expected no
answer, so surprise caught her again when he spoke.

“Harland hungry!”

“What? My word, chile . . .”

“Hungry!” In fact, Harland was ravenous, but
he did not know that word. He knew “hungry” and he repeated it now as he did
frequently in his search through the neighborhoods around his home, having
learned that saying it often enough would usually result in someone giving him
food.

“Okay, chile, let’s get you somethin’ to
eat.” Mazie took him inside and sat him down with a chunk of cornbread and two
fried eggs, which he gobbled down without chewing.

“More!” he demanded.
Mazie saw the fear and desperation in the boy’s eyes, and her own filled with
tears.

“Well, Lord, you sure done give me a chance
to do your work today!” She spoke aloud as she gave Harland another piece of
cornbread.

Mazie noticed the dirt and grime covering
the boy’s body, so she heated up a kettle of water and pulled the tub out from
under the stoop. Then she stripped off his dirty pants, tattered shirt and the
ragged shoes no longer big enough for his growing feet. She scrubbed him from
head to toe and dressed him in clothes and shoes her own sons had outgrown long
ago. Once clean, the child’s thick, black hair gleamed and his dark eyes no
longer showed anxiety.

“Now that’s better!”

“Better!” Harland mimicked with a big smile.

Mazie surveyed the boy and wondered what she
would do with him next. She had to go to work. She could not be responsible for
this stranger. Where did he live? Why was he wandering around Stumptown?

“What you doin’ with Crazy Eulah’s boy?”
Cora Jenkins called from the street.

“This little boy? He
come up here looking for food and I give him a bath, too. He was filthy. You
know his mama?”

“She live over there on Pearson, in the
little shack back off the street behind the piles a junk. He be all over the
place looking for food and a little love. He jus’ now findin’ his way to you?”

“I never did see this
boy ’fore he come here this mornin’. I figure he be my God’s work for the day!”
Mazie laughed and Cora joined in with her rich trill.

“Well, you bes’ be sendin’ him on home.
’Ventually Crazy Eulah’ll come lookin’ for him, but no tellin’ if that’s today,
tomorrow or when.”

“You mean she let this
chile roam ’round on his own? He jus’ a baby. Can’t be walking more’n a few
months.”

“Honey, he be wanderin’ since he be
crawlin’. Crazy Eulah leave him to hisself most the time. And his daddy ain’t
much better. Weren’t for the kindness of strangers, that chile woulda starved
or froze to death long time ago. You best fergit about that boy and git on to
work.”

“I’ll be gittin’ on to work, but I won’t be
fergittin’ ’bout this chile. Somebody gotta love him, and looks to me like the
Lord give me that job.”

“Think twice ’fore you decide, Mazie. No way
to know where takin’ in a little white boy will lead.”

Cora’s good advice went
unheeded. “No chile should have to fend for hisself in this world, not when he
barely kin walk or talk. Not when I got a piece a cornbread and a egg to keep
him fed, and not when I got arms to give him a hug and a voice to sing him a
lullaby.”

“Well, then . . .” And Cora walked off,
shaking her head as she took one last look at Mazie and Harland.

“Come on now, boy. I
gotta go to work.” Mazie slipped out of her apron, picked up her bag and took
the boy’s hand. They walked together to the corner of Pearson Drive, and she
pointed him in the direction of his house as she turned toward the Milners’.

“No . . .” he said and
gripped her hand tightly.

“Yes,” Mazie insisted.
She loosened his hand and pushed him gently in the direction of home. “Go now.”
She bent down to give him a hug before motioning him on. He stood and watched
as she walked away, huge tears rolling down his gaunt little cheeks.

Harland found his way through childhood much the same way
he had chanced upon Mazie. He rambled around the area surrounding the shack he
shared with Eulah and his father, picking up the basics of survival along the
way—food, clothing, language, craftiness—and in the process he developed a
shrewd comprehension of the world around him.

As he wandered about his
ever-expanding territory, Harland met the rich and poor alike. He quickly
grasped that scrounging from the first group proved much harder than from the
second. Those with plenty held to it tightly while people with little gave what
they could freely. Experiencing such stinginess and generosity side by side
proved a powerful influence on Harland’s forming psyche. Avarice sank its roots
in the fertile ground of the child’s soul while the generosity of his most
impoverished neighbors nurtured his growing body.

Harland’s relationship with Mazie and her
family deepened quickly. His visits became regular, and he grew to understand
he need not beg from them. Mazie and her family provided not only food and
clothing, but comfort and companionship. As the years passed, he became a
regular at their dinner table and often spent hours at the little place,
helping Mazie with the garden and chickens.

He would have lived there, gladly. Sometimes
she walked with him to the corner on her way to work, and frequently she found
him waiting on the same corner or on her stoop when she returned.

“Harland stay,” he’d proclaim without
budging.

“No, Harland, go home now.” Mazie always
responded the same way, the firm words coupled with a soft hand brushing back his
hair.

“Stay!”

“No. Go home, Harland! I can’t have no
little white boy sleepin’ in this house!” And he would reluctantly leave, only
to return the next day.

Only when Harland entered school did he
begin to learn the confusing social customs that dictated relationships between
blacks and whites. Why could he sit at the dinner table with Mazie and her
family but not play with her children in public?

This puzzled him, but even more so, it
filled him with shame. He knew intuitively his ability to survive depended upon
what people thought of him. How could he not have known about this taboo? Why
had no one told him? And what was he to do now? Who would feed him, hug him and
care for him if he couldn’t go to Mazie?

Just as he had done from infancy, Harland adapted
to the new circumstances forced upon him. He grew more secretive about his
visits with Mazie and her family. Over time, as he became more autonomous, his
visits to Stumptown became less frequent. Although he remained fond of Mazie,
he put distance between himself and her. Sometimes he went so far as to pretend
not to know her if he encountered her in public.

The critical gaps in Harland’s development
began to show themselves by his teenage years. Though self-reliant, he was not
responsible. He did what he wanted, what he determined to be important based on
his immediate needs. He was capable of handling whatever presented itself to
him, but he had not developed the ability to think ahead, to plan or prepare
for the challenges he would have to face as an adult.

When Eulah began including Stumptown in her
daily sojourns, Mazie knew the time had come to teach Harland an important life
lesson. She caught him one day as he left the tiny shack for school.

“Harland, we need to talk.”

“What? Mazie, what are you doing here?” He
looked around furtively.

“You gotta do somethin’ about Eulah.”

Harland caught his breath and bristled.

“It’s none of your business, Mazie. Leave me
alone.”

“I’ll do no such thing, young man. I took
you in when you was starvin’ and nearly naked. You growed up in my home more’n
you did in this place.” She glanced over his shoulder at the mess of a place he
called home.

His face flushed with shame, Harland tried
to cover by puffing himself up and jutting his chin toward her.